Blogs

I found the link to this article pondering about do what you love and all that over on an inline instruction email list, and they were joking about running away with the circus, so I should credit them for the idea of my title, too! I never found any video of Katie Ketchum in Cirque du Soleil, but I found two nice ones of her burning up with some sweet style on one of her favorite indoor street courses...She seems to focus on intricate, precise landings, but can pop a spin (see 0:52 or so). Mostly though it's less rotational and more flowing moves with stylish finishes...

What is it about a young kid only skating for twenty percent of his life that can fascinate and inspire? Maybe it's the low center of gravity, little awareness of pain, and ability to spin without expelling previously ingested appetizers? I don't know, but as much as I love road skating and find most street and vert performances to be a bit repetitive, I enjoyed watching this young Scot hit the ramps. Here's a bit of viddy with more available. If you only look at a few seconds, start at 2:30 or so to the end to see some front and back landing spins and some post ramp flippage. Nice!

Wow. It looks pretty nasty down there in downtown Atlanta. Check out the brightcove link below for the original video, but I'm updating this to include some video of a woman someone skating on the streets of Atlanta (near Georgia Tech I believe, where we've roadskated on wheels), inspired by eebee's posts below. Here's the brief roadskating video of a different sort...with figure skates, no less...

There's nothing so brilliant for me to say, except kudos to having a nice attitude and trying to make something good and fun out of a perhaps major mistake. It seems like 5 to 6 inches of ice would make a good start at a rink, and I vote for the Fire Department to come help smooth it out some. I have not been to the local outdoor ice rink but did drive by a few days ago on the way to something else. It seemed to be well attended by teens and such, who looked to be having fun.

It's the helmet debate. I read this article to see if my thoughts might be changed. They were not. My thoughts are not based on numbers, but on my increasing belief over the years based on my experiences, mainly my failures if you'd like to think of them that way, but I think they were accidents far less under my control than I believed only seconds before, all in apparently very safe conditions. This doesn't make me right, but it makes me convinced.

Heather Richardson won national titles in championship sprint races at both 500 and 1000 meters Monday. The News & Record doesn't have a proper sports section anymore, or not on Tuesdays at least, but Heather's double speedskating victory is the top story on the first page of today's sports coverage:

I'm glad to support specialized exercising opportunities, since I engage in a fringe sport, but sometimes I simply fail to understand. I do understand wanting to skate with your child, if they're on skates and you are too, and they are skating and not tethered to you.

I'm not sure what seems so great about skating while pushing a stroller. Certainly this is not an experience the child would see as any different, so it is for the parent. That's not bad, as long as it's safe, and that's not up to me to decide. So I support it but don't get it.

Shani Davis showed his speed at all distances this weekend as he won the all around for the U.S. Long Track National Championships in speed skating. In his first 10k (10,000-meter) in two years, he managed second place, seven seconds out. Davis had already won the 1500-meter. Davis hopes to give it a go in Calgary for the World Championships Allround too. But long distances are not easiest for him, he says:

I added a new sidebar section on training and some titles look pretty good, but I did not expect too much when I clicked on the article below from fireengineering.com, but I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, it's a simple introduction, but sometimes that is what we need...simple...not easy...and a reminder that training is how we stay fit, but also how we prepare for a variety of situations, especially athletic events.

Dutch Paralympic medalist Monique van der Vorst can walk again. This year she regained the use of her legs after 13 years of being wheelchair bound, the result of an injury suffered as a teenage field hockey player and complications from a subsequent surgical procedure gone wrong.